The Influencers

We profile 10 women who are crashing DCs old boys club

With an unprecedented 20 women in the U.S. Senate, the halls of power are starting to look more feminine. Rachael Combe profiles 10 women who are crashing DC's old boys club—with style.

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Jill Biden

Jill Biden

When Jill Biden, Ed.D., moved to DC to become Second Lady, she did something that no vice president's wife had ever done: She got a full-time paying job in her new hometown. She now teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College while also keeping up with the prodigious demands of her title. A military mother—her son Beau went to Iraq with the National Guard, and her son Hunter was recently commissioned as a navy officer—she and Michelle Obama started Joining Forces, a group that helps military families. "I simply cannot say enough about how much I love working with Jill," says Obama, adding that Biden is more friend than work partner. (Obama recently joked, discussing her own new 'do, that she's been "coveting Jill's bangs for four years" and dubbed the two "the bang sisters.") Like the First Lady, Biden has brought a down-to-earth chic to the Capitol. "I admire how you can feel her personality through her style," says Lela Rose, whose designs Biden wore for the inauguration. Of course, Biden's biggest fan may be the Veep himself: "I marvel at Jill's capacity to do so many things, so well, at the same time. I respect her as much as I love her. She's the love of my life."

Alyssa Mastro- monaco

Alyssa Mastro- monaco

Remember Bradley Whitford as Josh Lyman on The West Wing? White House deputy chief of staff Alyssa Mastromonaco is the real-life version, and she talks and thinks faster than any Aaron Sorkin character. She was Obama's scheduler back when he was a mere senator, orchestrated his every movement throughout the 2012 presidential campaign, managed his hunt for a running mate, and since then has become his go-to gal for everything from overseeing the cabinet staff to managing the Hurricane Sandy response. "When people need something at the White House, I have a lot of swat," she admits, laughing. She is known not only for her ability to read the president's mind but for having the discretion to keep it to herself. To prevent a slip of the tongue, she avoids reporters and dinner parties, preferring to spend nights at home with her fiancé, David Krone, Senate majority leader Harry Reid's chief of staff. She favors dressed-down looks at work but scours consignment stores for designers like Proenza Schouler and Oscar de la Renta for big nights out. Just 37, she was chosen by The New Republic magazine as one of its "most powerful, least famous" people in Washington.

Jill Biden

When Jill Biden, Ed.D., moved to DC to become Second Lady, she did something that no vice president's wife had ever done: She got a full-time paying job in her new hometown. She now teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College while also keeping up with the prodigious demands of her title. A military mother—her son Beau went to Iraq with the National Guard, and her son Hunter was recently commissioned as a navy officer—she and Michelle Obama started Joining Forces, a group that helps military families. "I simply cannot say enough about how much I love working with Jill," says Obama, adding that Biden is more friend than work partner. (Obama recently joked, discussing her own new 'do, that she's been "coveting Jill's bangs for four years" and dubbed the two "the bang sisters.") Like the First Lady, Biden has brought a down-to-earth chic to the Capitol. "I admire how you can feel her personality through her style," says Lela Rose, whose designs Biden wore for the inauguration. Of course, Biden's biggest fan may be the Veep himself: "I marvel at Jill's capacity to do so many things, so well, at the same time. I respect her as much as I love her. She's the love of my life."

Alyssa Mastro- monaco

Remember Bradley Whitford as Josh Lyman on The West Wing? White House deputy chief of staff Alyssa Mastromonaco is the real-life version, and she talks and thinks faster than any Aaron Sorkin character. She was Obama's scheduler back when he was a mere senator, orchestrated his every movement throughout the 2012 presidential campaign, managed his hunt for a running mate, and since then has become his go-to gal for everything from overseeing the cabinet staff to managing the Hurricane Sandy response. "When people need something at the White House, I have a lot of swat," she admits, laughing. She is known not only for her ability to read the president's mind but for having the discretion to keep it to herself. To prevent a slip of the tongue, she avoids reporters and dinner parties, preferring to spend nights at home with her fiancé, David Krone, Senate majority leader Harry Reid's chief of staff. She favors dressed-down looks at work but scours consignment stores for designers like Proenza Schouler and Oscar de la Renta for big nights out. Just 37, she was chosen by The New Republic magazine as one of its "most powerful, least famous" people in Washington.

Alexei Hay

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Susan McCue

Political strategist Susan McCue looks like a leggier Julianne Moore, collects vintage rock 'n' roll photography, counts Bono as a personal friend, and is at the nexus of both the money and the ideas that fuel Democratic politics. She came to DC in the early '90s to be a reporter, but instead she ended up working for a freshman senator named Harry Reid (now majority leader) and eventually became his chief of staff. "There's a magnetism to the Capitol building," she says. "I found I like to take sides and champion issues." When she left, she became the president and CEO of ONE, a Bono-backed group that uses campaign strategies to end extreme poverty worldwide by mobilizing voters in developed nations to demand increased foreign aid from their governments. At the same time, she still runs traditional campaigns in the U.S. and heads up two Democratic super-PACs. "But I'm also involved in conversations on campaign-finance reform," she says, laughing. Her ability to value both the idealistic and the pragmatic have made her a popular woman in a polarized town. James Carville has opined that she "may have more friends than anyone in Washington." And it's not hard to see why—who wouldn't want to be friends with the smartest, coolest chick in the room?

Alexei Hay

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Andrea Mitchell

Andrea Mitchell idolized plucky heroines like Nancy Drew and Brenda Starr when she was a girl; today, as NBC News' chief foreign affairs correspondent, she’s the living, breathing embodiment of those fearless investigators, careening daily from Today at the crack of dawn to her own show, Andrea Mitchell Reports, on MSNBC at midday to the Nightly News With Brian Williams, and then back home to her husband, former federal reserve chairman Alan Greenspan (how's that for a power couple?). To keep up with the pace, she employs "caffeine, adrenaline, and workouts, because exercise reenergizes me." Also, a wardrobe filled with perfect little dresses in stop-sign red from Chanel, Oscar de la Renta, Michael Kors, and Jason Wu. "I do tend to wear red when I’m really tired and I need to perk myself up," she says, a habit that started back in 1981 when her bureau chief advised her to wear the eye-catching shade so Reagan would notice her and call on her in the back row at a press conference. The trick worked, and she says red has been her "good-luck color" ever since. Not that Mitchell needs luck, with more experience and depth of knowledge than perhaps any other person in the news business. "Andrea is a network-news legend in real time," says Brian Williams. "She's a trailblazer who remains in control of the trail."

Alexei Hay

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Mignon Clyburn

Being the first woman of color named a member of the Federal Communications Commission "was a bit scary," says Mignon Clyburn. "A lot of eyes are on you." In 2009, when Obama plucked Clyburn from her native South Carolina, where she'd been an energy commissioner, some grumbled that she'd gotten the job as a favor to her House rep dad, James Clyburn. But Mignon shrugged off the naysayers and went to work shaping policy with social justice in mind: How could she make sure disenfranchised communities wouldn't be further cut off? How could she encourage companies to increase diversity? She won over her critics and is now said to be on Obama's short list to head the FCC. The civil rights movement—which played a crucial role in her life; her parents were organizers who met in jail—helps her to remember to have faith in progress: "Time will prove you right if you are on the course of being right."

Alexei Hay

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Michelle Freeman

Michelle Freeman was a stay-at-home mother when her husband, Joshua, was killed in a 2006 helicopter accident, leaving her in charge of the family real estate and sports empire (including part ownership of the NBA Wizards and NHL Capitols). Back then, she'd put on a power suit to convince herself she was in control: "It was like my armor." These days, she is in control, thriving in the macho real-estate and sports industries. (Her wardrobe loosened up as her mastery grew: She now eschews armor for Carolina Herrera and Oscar de la Renta dresses.) She also expanded the family charitable foundation, building an outdoor performance stage in Delaware that offers a free arts program to put disadvantaged kids "in front of their first live performance," she says. "You give kids options when you show them there's beauty in the world."

Alexei Hay

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Jessica Yellin

As the sole female chief White House correspondent, CNN’s Jessica Yellin is used to being the lone girl in the front row at presidential press conferences—and the boys are used to being scooped by her: Last year she was the only reporter among them to interview both the president and his wife. Though Yellin decided early on that she wanted to cover the commander in chief, the road to DC was paved with rejection: When she tried to break in, she was told she was too old (at 25!), too short, too blond, and that she'd be better suited to secretarial work. She persevered, paying her dues chronicling local Florida news, before being assigned to cover election night 2000—which turned into Bush v. Gore, and Yellin's work became na­tional news. Since then, she has covered multiple presidential elections and interviewed every president and first lady from the Clintons on. And, much like Ginger Rogers dancing backward in heels, Yellin has to worry about hair, makeup, and wardrobe—Theory, Tahari, Shoshanna, and "a ton of turtlenecks, so whoever makes the nicest turtlenecks"—while she's outmaneuvering the guys in the press pack. "I used to read stories about people who succeeded despite being told they couldn’t. When your career begins with no, how do you get past it?" she says. "When I heard no, I thought, Now I have to prove them wrong."

Alexei Hay

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Maria Teresa Kumar

When Voto Latino president and CEO Maria Teresa Kumar first made the rounds in New York City and DC nearly a decade ago, trying to get seed money for her organization, cofounded with Rosario Dawson, that uses technology and celebrity to increase civic involvement among young Latinos, "nobody got it." Two presidential elections later, it seems unthinkable that the potential of the Internet and, more to the point, young Hispanic voters, could have fallen on deaf ears. Kumar has since registered 120,000 young Latinos and counting, gathered a crowd of A-list celebrity supporters (Eva Longoria, Wilmer Valderrama, Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba, America Ferrera), and leads the pack in using technology to reach voters (the Obama campaign sent consultants in to learn from Kumar's operation). In 2012, "Latino youth outvoted their parents and grandparents for the first time," she says. "Fifty thousand Latinos turn 18 every single month. For me, that’s exciting."

Alexei Hay

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Susan Molinari

Susan Molinari, Google's vice president of public policy and government relations, isn't known for being shy. When guests at an inaugural event cohosted by Google wouldn't pipe down during a few short speeches, she first threatened to close down the bar, then to take away the food. People fell in line, as they tend to do for the former Republican congress­woman from New York's Staten Island. After a brief moment when she and her then congressman husband, Bill Paxon, were being called the Republican "Bill and Hillary," Molinari famously left her seat in 1997 to focus on her baby daughter—and because she found the Newt Gingrich reign nightmarish. But after years working as a journalist and lobbyist, she recently made the jump to Google. "[Google CEO] Larry Page tells us he wants us all to have a healthy disregard for the impossible. That's extremely inspiring." Plus, the office has its own chef, and she can wear flip-flops to work (though she still favors Armani suits and Akris dresses). The word on the Hill was that Google hired Molinari to soften its über-Democratic image, but she says instead that the tech behemoth needed an interpreter: "A significant portion of what I do is translate Google ideas to DC and then Congress's visions back to Silicon Valley."

Alexei Hay

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Kirsten Gillibrand

Is it Kirsten Gillibrand's lot in life to finish what Hillary Clinton has left undone? When Gillibrand was appointed to Clinton's vacant Senate seat in 2008, the New York City local media howled with disbelief that a nobody was being thrust upon their glittering metropolis (Gillibrand had been an upstate congresswoman). At 42, the youngest member of the upper house and the mother of two small children, the smiley, blond Gillibrand certainly stuck out in the grizzled boys club of the Senate. But she quickly proved herself as shrewd as any codger, threading the bipartisan needle to repeal "don’t ask, don’t tell" and unanimously pass a health bill for 9/11 first responders. She launched Off the Sidelines, a website and PAC to elect more women to office, which raised her profile during the year of the War Against Women. Running for her first full term last fall, she amassed $13 million without seeming to break a sweat and won with 72 percent of the vote. And days into her second term she'd already made her mark on the issue of the moment, wooing a Republican to cosponsor her anti–gun trafficking bill. With each victory, more of the chatterati wonder if she'll pick up where Hillary left off on the national stage and run for president in 2016. Gillibrand, though she can't help but smile when asked, demurs. "I'm the cheerleader for Hillary Clinton 2016. We need her leadership very badly." But if HRC opts out, keep your eye on Gillibrand to fulfill the promise of a female president in our lifetimes.